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What 10,000+ People Say About Linux Graphics

10-25-2007, 01:00 PM

Phoronix: What 10,000+ People Say About Linux Graphics

This past Sunday we started our first-ever Linux Graphics Survey that looked at the usage of X.Org display drivers, hardware, and the display features being sought after by Linux desktop users. In less than four days, we received over 10,000 survey submissions! This survey will be going on until November 21, so if you haven't yet participated you still have plenty of time to do so. But for those of you that have already taken the survey, what are the results so far? Well, below are the percentages from all of the responses collected before 10:00AM PST today. In Late November when the survey has ended, we will present the final results.

In my opinion this is poor question to ask. I want ALL these features, and yes I think they are all key features to having a happy experience in linux. That's exactly why all of these percentages are so low, with no majority.

The question, in my opinion, would be better rephrased: Rank the following features in order of importance to you. At least that way you can tell for certain what's the most desired feature.

that Digital Graphics/Art isn't mentioned there. Yes! There are people who use their Linux box for the creation of digital graphics, thereby needing high performance graphics accelerators. An important factor of the performance are stable and well written drivers, with which NVIDIA has dominated the past years. Those drivers aren't perfect though. They contain plenty of bugs, mostly confirmed by open source developers, that NVIDIA simply ignores and doesn't want to fix. Furthermore, NVIDIA is still refusing to release GPU specifications. ATI/AMD is doing that right now, and I hope that their support will improve at some point. Who knows, my next graphics card may be a ATI. Either way, it's in my opinion rather saddening that digital graphics creation is disregarded in this matter.

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The used Ati drivers can be more than the used Ati cards. I have two Ati cards which is only one vote for Ati, but I'm using the radeon (Radeon LE) and the fglrx (Radeon X1650Pro) drivers, which are two votes for Ati drivers.

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The used Ati drivers can be more than the used Ati cards. I have two Ati cards which is only one vote for Ati, but I'm using the radeon (Radeon LE) and the fglrx (Radeon X1650Pro) drivers, which are two votes for Ati drivers.

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Yeah, go nvidia go! (sorry for a bit of fanboyism.) Btw, I voted twice - one each for my notebook (nv 7400go) and for my desktop (nv 7300gs). Although lot of people have lot many problems with the drivers, it still is a better choice . It has been a pretty good time for me with nvidia (in fact, I have never used anything other than nv in my history ).

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Right now, it's up in the air. If Intel's discrete GPU offerings measure up and they keep at least the same level of support (Open Source, specs available under NDA, but the code's well maintained and commented enough that you'd hardly NEED it...) then NVidia and AMD have something to be very, very worried about. Having said this, barring the issues with the G80 parts right at the moment (they had similar issues with the Windows drivers, by the by...), NVidia's got the better choices for OpenGL support with Intel being second rung right at the moment. IF AMD gets on the stick and helps us out by getting the rest of their chipset programming information to the community and given about 6-12 months after they do so, we should see that flip-flop with AMD and Intel being the dominant players because they're OPEN and NVidia, while they support us well enough, don't support us that way and the other two DO.